


The Scent of Death is Sweet

by HindsightHero



Category: Red Hood and the Outlaws
Genre: Comfort/Angst, Death References, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-16
Updated: 2013-05-16
Packaged: 2017-12-12 00:59:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/805313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HindsightHero/pseuds/HindsightHero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death has a scent. It took Jason a year and a half to realize it, but death definitely had a scent. Sickeningly sweet, and overwhelming in its sincerity, death smelled like…well. Death. It clung to him, and tortured him, and it wasn't until meeting Roy that he realized, it didn't cling to him alone. Maybe he didn't have to be alone either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Scent of Death is Sweet

**Author's Note:**

> So I make perfumes/colognes, and I often think about how characters would smell. I’ve also spent a lot of time in hospitals and rehab clinics to know that, yeah, you can smell when someone’s life is running out. Creepy or not, this fic is the result of way too much thinking about how Jason smells.

          Death has a scent. It took Jason a year and a half to realize it, but death definitely had a scent. Sickeningly sweet, and overwhelming in its sincerity, death smelled like…well. Death. It wasn’t unique, just varying in its strength, and determination in the way it clung to certain individuals. See, terminally ill patients? It follows them when they speak, and walk. Doctors most often describe it as something akin to rotting fruit, rancid and intoxicating in the fact you just know it’s bad, but it shouldn’t be. Looking back, Jason knew he had come across so many times before on the streets. The problem was, ever since he came back, it clung to him like some type of ironic cologne. Constantly reminding him that he had died, and some forsaken entity wouldn’t let him forget it.   
  
           After a day, he thought he could ignore it. After a week, he tried obsessively showering. After a month, he had tried every kind of cologne, herbal mixture and sacred remedy he could find. But nothing worked. It was driving him crazy, day by day, breath by breath. So he stayed away from people, because, eventually the smell just made him sick. He didn’t eat, because he could smell it on the food, he didn’t drink, because anywhere that sold alcohol just reeked of the scent. Middle aged men and women, livers failing. Even his cigarettes couldn’t cover it up, though his addiction did get worse again.   
  
         After months of isolation, Jason eventually just focused on his work. He realized, as bad it’s saccharine scent was, like everything else, he got used to it. He could ignore it. People ignored it, though he never understood how. It wasn’t until a certain day in Qatar, that Jason thought about it for the first time in months. The first time he felt self-conscious about it.

         Roy Harper had had his share of close calls. There were months where he was honestly surprised he made it to see a sunrise. Months where, he didn’t want to see a sunrise, or anything else for that matter. He had embraced death, but just like everything else he had come across, death didn’t want him. Nothing wanted him and soon he learned to laugh it off. Still, from years of fighting, years of drug and alcohol abuse, death’s scent clung to him worse than an 80 year old cancer patient who had been drinking since the age of 4. To put it lightly.

        He hated the scent. Everyone could smell it on him, he was sure, And it was like death was constantly mocking him, laughing in his face that he couldn’t have her, or him, Roy wasn’t one to judge. Finally it drove him mad enough to go on a sure enough suicide mission to Qatar.  No one would miss him, and maybe enough blood and dirt could cover up that awful unforgiving smell. 

        He wasn’t expecting it. Honestly. If you had asked Roy whether, in months of dry, desert conditions, he had expected his first thought to be ‘Hey this dude smells familiar’ he would have thought you were crazy. Or he was.   
  
No he was definitely crazy.  
  
         Jason blasted Roy’s chains off, and handed him bow, and in less than three minutes they were in a jeep heading for who knows where. But just before that. When the battle died down, and the engine was starting, there was a pause.  
  
        He could smell something. It wasn’t the diesel fuel, though it was close. And it wasn’t the iron tinged blood that clung to their clothes. It wasn’t the rusting metal of the jeep, or the sweat. It was something far more familiar. Something that definitely shouldn’t be as welcoming as it currently was.   
  
        Then it hit him. Jason turned to look at Roy, and Roy for brief moment wondered if Jason’s expression under that mask matched his. He hoped so. Because maybe then this would be a little less awkward. Or wait. Could Jason even smell it under that mask? Could Jason smell it at all?  
  
         Roy squirmed in his seat, and Jason’s foot hit the gas pedal and they sped off, sand and dust trailing behind him. Roy was silently thankful for the choke to his senses.  
  
         That was it. They never spoke about it. Never exchanged words, or more than a moment’s glance, but it hung in the air and if there was anything Roy hated, it was not talking things out.   
  
         They traveled around for weeks. To islands, to big cities, to ancient creepy caves with fucked up mazes in the middle of the Himalayas, to god damn Colorado. They traveled everywhere and it was driving Roy crazy. Starfire usually traveled by herself, she could fly after all, which meant Jason and Roy always ended up traveling together. Which meant, hours of sitting next to each other, and just smelling each other.  
  
Which, wow. That was fucked up.  
  
        But to Roy, what was even worse, was how as time went on, he got more than used to the scent. He stopped worrying about how it surrounded him, but how it surrounded Jason. How it suited Jason. And in some way, it was comforting.  
  
        So as time went on, they didn’t need to talk about it. Jason hated talking about death, His especially. He wouldn’t let Roy talk about his own close-calls, or how they both at one point or another had a death wish. Hell, how they maybe still do.   
  
        They didn’t need to talk about it because it was there. On nights when they shared way to small hotel rooms, and the lights were out, it would fill the room. They would fall asleep to it. Even on nights when the room was far too big, Roy found himself moving to find a place to sleep that was closer to Jason. It got bad enough, he couldn’t get a wink of sleep unless he could smell it. Smell Jason.  
  
         Jason knew it, too. He saw how Roy warmed up to it. How, unlike everyone else he didn’t turn his nose up, or pity him, or ignore it. Roy knew what the scent meant without even saying a word. Because he had been there, almost. Just enough.   
  
         So Jason didn’t mind when Roy would slowly scoot closer to him on planes, or in their hotel rooms. Or think it odd when Roy chose to sleep in a chair by the bed, instead of in the guest room.   
  
It was nice.  To find comfort in Roy’s own, odd comfort in him.    
  
         So maybe he had died, and maybe on nights when Jason woke up from nightmares, or came back from self-punishing walks in freezing rain, the smell still made him sick. It was a constant reminder as ever, that everything he had done was wrong, and that his existence was a miserable one.   
  
Roy understood it all too well.   
  
         So on those nights, Roy would have a change of clothes ready and waiting for Jason, because he knew Jason would want a shower, and scrub at his skin to get it to go away.  
  
It never did, but Roy never mentioned it.   
  
         On nights when, Roy himself would get lost in despair, or his death wish would come back ten-fold, Jason was there. And maybe, he was just getting addicted to scent of death, but either way Roy didn’t care. Jason would sit with him on some torn up, dusty couch in some weapons warehouse in Berlin and they wouldn’t say anything. Roy would just fall asleep, and Jason would let him.


End file.
